


Earrings

by Yalu



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: Angst, Family, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 07:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4339760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yalu/pseuds/Yalu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day she turned twelve, Sarah got her ears pierced. Pops didn't understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earrings

**Author's Note:**

> I just saw Terminator: Genisys and for some reason kept noticing Emilia's pierced ears. Then this happened.

The day she turned twelve, Sarah got her ears pierced. Pops didn't understand.

He was starting to get that birthdays were _important_ , even if he didn't get why ("You continue to age at the same rate regardless of the duration of the Earth's orbit"), and they were working on the idea of presents ("Congratulations. You have survived another year. Your physical form may now be sufficient to absorb the recoil of a shotgun"), but last year she'd had to argue for two hours to get a cake, she hadn't been allowed to go to the movies with her school friends, and Pops wouldn't even _consider_ extending her bedtime by an hour: she was still sent to bed at nine sharp every night. Every night!

Not this year. 

Sarah tossed her head back, arms folded and making sure the new round studs in her (sore, red) earlobes were catching as much light as possible. "So what?"

"They are not practical," Pops repeated, standing totally still in the middle of the kitchen, a jar of spaghetti sauce open in one hand. "It is unwise to provide an enemy with a possible target to take hold of."

"If a terminator got close enough to grab me it won't matter if I'm wearing big dangly earrings or none," Sarah threw back. Predictable, Pops. She'd rehearsed that one.

He stared at her blank-faced for another few seconds (she'd _told_ him normal people tilted their heads or something when they were thinking), then turned back to the stove and stirred the pasta for her dinner (Pops couldn't cook much since he couldn't taste anything, and spaghetti was her favourite of the stuff he could. She'd had to _tell_ him that you get your favourite food on birthdays; when she got home he was halfway through making cold turkey sandwiches). Back to her, he said, "Flesh of the human earlobe requires six weeks to heal before piercing studs can be removed."

"Yeah, the lady who did it told me. It was a shop in the mall, I didn't go to a back alley or something," Sarah told him, rolling her eyes. She wasn't _stupid_. Geez, sometimes it was like he thought she didn't listen at all. Next he was probably going to check that she was carrying her switchblades all the time, too. 

And oh _God_ had she ever had to fight just to get to go to the mall on her own. The switchblades were the compromise; that and she was pretty sure Pops shadowed her most of the time too. He definitely patrolled the school perimeter all day; she saw him sometimes through the trees out classroom windows, but if it were up to him, that would be as far away as she ever got. She was never allowed to go to Gracie's house after school ("The premises is not secure"), she had to come up with the dumbest excuses for missing everyone's birthdays and sleepovers (Pops actually took her to Disneyland once just so they could take enough pictures in different outfits to look like they went there a lot; she was so, SO amazing for coming up with that idea), but the mall was too full of strangers and too few 'sufficiently important' reasons to hang out there to talk him into it. Eventually she'd had to break out the threats: That they had to blend in, had to _infiltrate_ , and she'd draw too much attention if she didn't act like a normal kid. It was a good argument, but she had to save it for the really important stuff. Pops was onto her. 

Sarah plopped into the chair at their tiny kitchen table and started chopping lettuce. Favourite food or not, Pops never ever let her go a day without 'adequate nutrition', so salad was on the menu whether she liked it or not. But there _was_ going to be cake this year; he'd promised, and he never lied. He'd even agreed to surprise her – but only about whether he got her plain or chocolate cake. Last year he'd brought _carrot_.

"They serve no purpose," Pops said suddenly. Sarah blinked for a second, touched her new studs and shrugged. 

"They don't have to," she said. "I like them." 

Pops went quiet again. He was terrible at judging what she liked (after one time he'd bought her a pair of pants that _Mom_ would've called old fashioned, she'd made a rule: she picks stuff, he pays for it. His clothes too. How could someone made for infiltration be so bad at fitting in?), so maybe he would let this go as another 'illogical human aesthetic beyond the parameters of my programming'.

She got to hope that right up until he started draining the pasta and said: "Self ornamentation is a cultural symbol of readiness to mate. Kyle Reese will not arrive in this timeline until May 12th 1984."

Sarah groaned, screwed her eyes shut and tried to remember that he wasn't making her take them out. He wasn't. That was the goal here: Keep the earrings. "Well, maybe I didn't get them for _Kyle Reese_ ," she scowled. 

Pops froze, halfway to serving the spaghetti. "You cannot mate with another male. The resulting progeny would not be John Connor."

"Oh _God_ –"

"And you are too young. Your menstrual cycles have only recently begun–"

"OH GOD STOP." Sarah covered her ears and cringed into the table. "You _promised_ you'd never talk about that EVER again." 

He stopped. He scooped the spaghetti out onto a plate, tipped the sauce out over it and took the pans to the sink to start the dishes. Sarah uncurled slowly, watching over her shoulder till she was sure wasn't going to talk more, then leaned forward to breathe in the steam and smell of the sauce. She twirled her fork in the spaghetti, twisted it into a huge, dripping knot, and crammed it into her mouth.

It... didn't taste great. It wasn't bad or anything, he made it exactly the same way every time; it just... wasn't birthday food. 

On her last real birthday, Mom had made roast chicken with mashed potatoes. Pops burned it, somehow, and never tried again ("There is sufficient culinary variety in our existing selection of meals"). She only got boiled potatoes now, and mashed them herself. Daddy always used to give her geography lessons by flattening his mash into a big square and cutting roads with his fork until the potatoes were the square blocks of their neighbourhood, and then, when she got older, their suburb, and later all of LA. The game was that Sarah would eat each city block only when she could name them, and by the time she turned nine, she was gulping down suburbs so fast Daddy couldn't keep up.

Pops finished the dishes, put the pans away, and stood motionless at the edge of the kitchen, waiting for her to finish.

Sarah scrubbed at her eyes before they could tear up. Her parents had been terminated. They weren't coming back.

Lost in thought, she didn't realise how long she'd been twisting her fork in the pasta until she tried to take another bite and almost the whole plateful lifted. She jumped and it slid off and landed with a wet smack, spraying a mess of red speckles sprayed all over the table, her glass, her arms and her shirt. She groaned and started wiping herself off with a napkin.

Pops handed her a damp dishtowel. "Thanks," she mumbled. Ugh, this shirt was _white_. She'd have to wash it, tonight, or it'd be ruined. Way to spend a birthday, right?

"Your new earrings look very nice," Pops said. Sarah sighed and shook her head, dabbing at the specks.

"You don't mean that."

He was silent for a second, the kind of silent she'd thought meant he was surprised, or something. "I do not lie."

Nope, offended. God, she couldn't deal with this right now. "Whatever."

She slid off her chair and carried her plate to the sink. Pops lifted it out of her hands and put it back on the table, turning her back to her seat at the same time. "You have not consumed adequate nutrition."

She shoved his arm off. "I'm not hungry."

"Consumption of baked confectionary will result in sugar imbalance unless you consume a standard meal."

Sarah wrenched herself out of the chair. "I don't WANT it!" 

Pops stepped back. "I do not understand."

"You heard me!" she yelled. "I don't want it, I don't want any of it! This isn't a _birthday_ , this isn't even close!"

He was totally still. "It is the anniversary of you birth celebrated by unnecessary acquisitions and confectionary."

Sarah shoved the chair away, yelling, "You DON'T GET IT!" and whirled around to storm off to her room.

Of course Pops followed. "Further explanation is required," he said, stopping in the doorway. 

"Don't _bother_ , you won't understand," she muttered, dropping on her bed to curl up, back to him. 

"Without sufficient data I cannot take action."

Sarah clawed her pillow and buried her face in it. Screaming wouldn't _help_ , he never _got_ it, never got mad, never got _anything_. "You can't fix it, okay? Just stop _trying_!"

"No. You are unhappy."

And Sarah paused at that. Pops had figured out happy from unhappy pretty quickly, and he got people enough to realise that she'd behave better if she was happy, but... It always seemed like he let her have her way sometimes just so later on she'd do gun training and stuff without a fight. She never thought her feelings might be the point. 

Slowly, she rolled back to look at him over her shoulder. Pops was waiting quietly. 

He didn't have to wait. She'd thrown tantrums before; he knew that with enough time she'd get over it. Once she'd given him the silent treatment for three weeks and he'd just waited it out, but that was over a dress she didn't really need and they really couldn't afford (not without robbing a bank. Again.). He only refused her when he thought whatever she wanted might put her in danger – and okay, that was a lot, he totally overreacted to everything, but... 

Huh. Maybe she hadn't been as smart as she thought, 'tricking' him into going to Disneyland. Maybe he'd done it just to make her happy.

_"I was sent to protect you," the big man said, picking her up. His leather jacket squeaked under her wet arms: The smoke from the blown up cabin was burning in her nose and she couldn't stop watching the flames. "You will be safe, Sarah Connor. I am here to ensure you will grow into the woman who will produce John Connor."_

Pops was a machine. Of course he'd meant every word. _That_ Sarah, the one he needed, she grew up with parents. _That_ Sarah had a family, and friends and fun and no _stupid_ war to ruin her life and _it – wasn't – fair_. 

Sarah felt her eyes prickle and she sucked in a sharp breath. _No_. Not now, God. She ducked her head to hide it, but fat chance of that. Pops strode to her bedside and leaned over. "You are beginning to cry."

She buried her face in the pillow. She was too _old_ for this!

Her shoulders shook. 

She heard Pops move next to her, heard him kneel down next to her bed, and then– Then he touched her. He almost never touched her, but he did now: He put a heavy hand on her shoulder and sort of thumped it, trying– trying to pat her the way Gracie's mom had last week when she'd failed her math test. They'd run to the gate after school so the other kids wouldn't see Gracie cry and when they got there, Gracie's mom had patted her shoulder and said, _"It's okay, honey, it's just one test. We'll make sure you're ready for the next one. What do you need, hmm?"_

Pops asked, "What do you require?"

_Warm arms, hand stroking her hair. "Sarah, honey, what's wrong? It's okay, sweetie, come here..."_

She squeezed her eyes shut. They were _gone_ , they were _terminated_ , they were _never_ coming back but _Mommy_ I want _Mommy_ I want Daddy I want to go _home!"_

"That is beyond my capabilities."

She broke. Suddenly her face was hot and her eyes were burning and her cheeks wet and shoulders shaking and she didn't remember it starting and it didn't matter, didn't matter, didn't care. She twisted and curled into Pops' chest and _clung_ , sobbing into his shirt and forgetting everything but the ache of _empty_ in her chest. _Never coming back, never coming back..._

More than a minute later, Pops secured one servo-driven arm around her, and let her cry as long as she needed.

 

"Congratulations. You are twelve years, one month and two weeks old. Your perforated earlobes have now recovered and can handle small ornaments of light weight. These will do." 

He held out a huge palm with two little blue plastic triangles sitting in it, the hooks lined up neatly by his thumb. 

Sarah stared. "Really?"

If Pops really knew how to blend in, he would've blinked. "I am not kidding you."

"No, I know, I mean– _Really_?" Sarah leapt away from her cereal and around the table to take them. She held them up and bent over to see her reflection in the blurry glass of the oven door. The blue was bright against her hair, and the way the little shapes dangled made her look so much better, so much older! (The colour didn't fit with her outfit at _all_ , but she could change). 

She turned and threw her arms around Pops' chest. "Thank you! They're great!"

Eventually, he put an arm around her shoulders. (He was getting better at this, it only took maybe three times longer for him than normal parents now). "The ornaments have a 62% probability of becoming tangled in your hair and an 80% probability of causing physical damage if force is applied to remove them."

"I'll be careful, I promise," said Sarah, pulling back to take out the pointy little studs she didn't need anymore. "Thank you so much!"

Maybe it was her imagination, but it almost looked like Pops smiled.


End file.
